Portable selective call receivers (pagers) are widely used to communicate various types of messages. One type of pager, called a numeric pager, displays primarily the telephone number entered by the paging party. Often, the user of the pager receives pages from many parties, and cannot identify the party based on a received telephone number. The pager user sometimes delays returning the call when the received telephone number is not familiar. In a worse case, the page message is totally ignored because the displayed telephone number is not recognized.
Efforts have been made in an attempt to solve this problem. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,336,524 and 4,267,480. These patents are directed to a technique known as "canned messaging" in which a short code is transmitted to a pager, and in the pager a message corresponding to the code is displayed. However, a disadvantage of this canned message technique is that the code needs to be memorized, or at least recalled, by the party sending the page. Furthermore, for practical applications, the canned messages are limited to a standard list.
Recently, portable electronic devices have evolved to include many diverse functions, such as, for example, personal organizer devices with communication functions like paging and electronic mail. With the advent of the combined functions in portable electronic devices, certain communication features can be realized more efficiently.